Wonder Woman first movie made a made an excellent introduction worthy of introducing one of the few female heroes we have on the big screen. In the first Wonder Woman, we watch the origins of the Diana Prince as she is raised on the island of Themiscarya. When pilot Steve Trevor washes up on the beaches of the hidden island, Diana first enters into mans world on a quest to find the god of war Ares, whom she believes is responsible for WWII. The film ended up being a box office hit. Does WW82 live up to it’s predecessor? Spoiler alert for those who have not scene the movie yet.
Wonder Woman 1984 has an excellent opening scene where a team of theives robs a jewelry store that is a front for selling stolen artifacts. The thieves scatter once Diana shows up all clad up in her Wonder Woman outfit. It is important to note that even though it has been years, the people of the 1980 era are not really calling her Wonder Woman yet, as confirmed by a news report. Anyway, one of the theives takes a kid hostage, threating to throw the kid from the second story of the building. The other theives try to talk the guy out of doing it. Wonder Woman swoops in and stops him, and than wrangles up the rest of the thieves like the snakes they are. This was an excellent opening to the movie.
From their we learn that Diana has still not gotten over the loss of Steve Trevor. We meet Barbara Mirnerva, the nerdy opposite of Diana. The FBI wants the items that where found in jewelry store identified and catalogged. One item in particular turns out to be a powerful wishing stone that acts as a double edge sword for the movie. To give you a hint, let me just say that wishes can have a bad side to them.
Steve Trevor turns out to be alive. I don’t want to give to many spoilers on that because it does lead to an emotional, pivotal moment in Diana journey during the movie.
Now lets talk about the villains of the film. We are introduced to Maxwell Lord. Maxwell Lord is a known character in the DC comics universe. Especially for being the killer of Justice League member Ted Kord aka Blue Beatle. That is not the villain we get for this story. What we get is a con man who thinks of himself as a loser. He is a father, and wants his kid to be proud of him. Maxwell had originally conned investors in investing in land that turned out to have no oil on it. All of his investors backed out when they discovered his scheme. Losing everything, Maxwell ends up learning about the stone from the jewelry store. He goes to the musuem, where he meets Barbara. During an event, he flirts with Barbara and takes her to her office for what she believes is to do a little romping around with her. He cons Barbara into giving him the stone. Later he makes a wish and merges himself with the stone. Throughout the story he loses his sanity and is slowly killing himself. He renounces his power when he sees how much danger he had put his own son Allistair in. All of this makes him not just a greedy con man, but a sympathetic con man. After all, hasn’t anyone ever felt like a loser at some point, and wished they had power over the whole world?
The next villain in the movie is Cheetah. Barbara becomes Cheetah slowly throughout the movie, but does not fully transform until the final crisis of the film. Cheetah had more of frenemy type of relationship with Diana Prince. As the film progressives we see Barbara start off as the nerdy, caring, kind, character who nobody notices or wants to hang out with, to becoming more confident type of animal. As she progresses in finding becoming Cheetah, she loses the kind, and caring part of her in order to become the more noticeable, more powerful, version of her. We do not get to see what happens to this character at the end. The last we see of her is when she is looking at a bright light as everyone in the world renounces their wishes.
Gal Gadot, and Kristen Wiig where my two favorite actors in the film. As usual, Gal Gadot was the perfect choice for Wonder Woman, but that was already proven in the first film. Kristen Wiig did an excellent job playing Cheetah. I just hope they bring her back for the third Wonder Woman movie because the character was left with much to desire. Since we did not see her character renounce her wish and become nerdy Barbara Minerva again, I hope that they will bring back Cheetah in Wonder Woman 3.
S.T EVANS Books 